1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to a pinch grip hanger mechanism, and more particularly pertains to a clip hanger loading mechanism providing a fast and efficient mechanism and method for loading garments into pinch grip clip hangers.
2. Description of Related Art
Consumer taste and fashion have dictated a desire for mass-produced, but well-fitted garments, which are distributed and sold throughout the United States. Large national retailers of clothing generally contract with a plurality of clothing manufacturers to produce uniform standardized clothing, which is essentially identical from batch to batch, even though manufactured by different entities. These manufacturers in turn produce the clothing at their own plants, or in many cases, subcontract the production of the garments to manufacturers based in the Far East, for instance, in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea.
In the retail clothing industry clothing is typically suspended from hangers at the point of purchase. Such hangers are often inexpensive ship-on types and under prevailing garment-on-hanger programs, the garment is shipped from the manufacturer to the retailer while suspended from a hanger. However, the time and labor costs associated with the operation of taking each hanger, loading a garment into the hanger and then placing the hanger with the garment affixed thereon in a suitable form for shipment is not insignificant at the manufacturing level.
For these reasons the industry has developed a variety of devices partially automating the operation of suspending garments from hangers. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,349,127 to Savard a device is provided which holds a stack of hangers and, when the operator is ready for the operation of affixing the garment thereon, feeds the hangers one by one in a position suitable for carrying out the operation. After one hanger with the garment affixed thereon is removed, the device permits the next hanger to be automatically fed to the operator who affixes the next garment thereon.
Another device which automatically advances hangers, one at a time, to an operator is the Hangermatic 589 manufactured by Trim-Master, 4860 North 5th Street Highway, Temple, Pa. The Hangermatic 589 includes a pair of magazine towers, which contain a vertical stack of hangers there between. The hangers rest on a plate member and are selectively engaged by a reciprocating plate, which selectively engages the lowermost hanger and urges it outwardly to a stop means on an outer plate, which becomes extended. The hanger is thereby held in an extended position at which point the operator may affix a garment to the hanger and then remove the hanger. After removal of the hanger the outer plate, which is spring loaded returns to the inner plate activating a control, which returns the reciprocating plate to its original position. In a fully automatic mode, the reciprocating plate returns to pick up another hanger from the magazines and advance it to the extended position.
A modified form of this device that provided automatic feed for pants hangers having a steel spring clam shell design was also developed. In this hanger, a steel retaining clip was manually clamped over the clam shell to secure the garment. Use of the hangers in this device required a manual operation to slide the steel clip over the clam shell to close the retention clip on the garment.
For purposes of displaying garments suspended on hangers in an orderly and attractive manner to the retail customer, it is often desired to affix an indicating means on the hanger in a position visible to the retail customer while the hanger is suspended on a rack. The indicating means identifies some attribute of the garment suspended from the hanger, such as size, quality, color, manufacturing data, or pattern.
To accommodate the various types of hangers available in the industry numerous indicating means have been developed in a variety of shapes, sizes and materials. For instance, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,322,902, Des. 341,947 and Des. 332,180 and World Publication No. 90/09651 all disclose plastic indicia-bearing caps attached to the top of the hook. In U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,115,940, 5,096,101, 5,199,608 and 5,238,159, indicia-bearing flanges which attach an indicia-bearing sizer substantially at the junction of both the hook and the body member are disclosed.
Typically, the indicating means are manually affixed. However, a system for automatically affixing indicating indicia-bearing size caps to the top of a garment hanger is disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,272,806 and 5,285,566 to Marshall, et al. which are assigned to the assignee of the present invention.
The system disclosed in the Marshall, et al. patents discloses an improvement to the Hangermatic 589 device and includes a third magazine to receive a bundle of size caps which are individually attached to the hangers as they are dispensed. Each of the magazines on the improved Hangermatic are independently adjustable to configure the device to variety of hanger configurations. In the Marshall et. al. device, the configuration of the reciprocating plate is altered to provide a cutout which conforms to the exterior dimension of the color and index-coded size cap. In operation, a single index size cap and a single hanger are withdrawn from their respective magazines and the index cap is secured to the hanger as the plate reciprocates forwardly to the extended position for attachment of a garment.
However, none of the above-mentioned devices can accommodate newer model pants hangers, which have a spring action pinch grips. These prior art devices are unsuitable for use with the pinch grip hangers since both pinch grips are normally biased to a closed position by a spring and both must be opened to load a garment into the grips. At the present time this requires an operator to perform four steps. Using one hand the operator must open the first pinch grip and then using the other hand to suspend the garment, one side of the garment is placed in the grip. This process is then repeated for the other pinch grip. With the second pinch grip the operator must also simultaneously tension the garment between the clips, and since both hands are already occupied, the tensioning step may require additional manual movements. At a minimum, four manual steps or movements are required.
Further, some pinch grip hangers have plastic hooks, adapted to receive a size cap related to a characteristic of the garment to be loaded into the hanger. The placement of the size cap on each device requires either a separate machine, such as the previously described prior art device, or manual application of the size caps. Therefore, the labor required to correctly load or secure and size the garment is increased, resulting in higher labor costs and lower productivity.
The object of the present invention is to overcome these obstacles with a mechanism which automatically presents the hanger to the operator and automatically opens and closes the new style hanger clips for insertion of the garment. Optionally, the invention can automatically attach the size cap on the hanger as it is presented to the operator for garment loading. The invention promotes safe and efficient operation of the placement of garments and size indicias on pinch grip hangers.